====== Stump ======

Perhaps due to a cultural divide between people who try to describe data graphs and those who've dug up plants (gardeners, botanists, and many children) there is a mathematical object called a tree which is an acyclic graph.  That sort of //tree// is very familiar to most of us, occurring as representations of hierarchies, and in genealogy as trees of ancestors and trees of descendants. In hierarchies and descendants trees, the top-most item (individual) is called the **root**.

However, as was nicely illustrated by an installation in Haguenau, France, the trunks of trees connect to a root so branched it is virtually indistiguishable from a tree!  So I've decided that within the hierarchical structure of this wiki web site, I'll call the top node of each sub-tree a **stump**.  And consider whether and when [[crotch|]] or something else (what is the grafting of two trunks or branches together called?) might be more appropriate.